Cross
loc · Latin script
Meaning: (i) Person who lived by a roadside or market cross or at a crossroads; (ii) a different form of Crosby (ii)
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Cross is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country.
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 2.5K(inferred from the name graph)
- CACanada≈1 in 4.1K
- USUnited States1 in 4.3K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 529 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.5K (inferred from the name graph)
≈360,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United Kingdom, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
(i) Person who lived by a roadside or market cross or at a crossroads; (ii) a different form of Crosby (ii).
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 5 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Cross counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | ≈360,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.9K | — | Cross | 17 |
| US United States | 77,557 | 1 in 4.3K | 78K | Cross | 529 |
| GB United Kingdom | ≈27,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | listed | Cross | 302 |
| AU Australia | ≈9,400 est. | ≈1 in 2.7K | — | Cross | 225 |
| CA Canada | ≈9,100 est. | ≈1 in 4.1K | — | Cross | 212 |
| IE Ireland | ≈1,600 est. | ≈1 in 3.2K | — | Cross | 78 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈1,400 est. | ≈1 in 3.4K | — | Cross | 109 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Cross is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, ‘dweller by the cross’; first attested Richard del Crosse 1285 AssLa (Lancashire)
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In Irish, This English locative name is sometimes used as a synonym of MacCrossan
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
In Basque, proscribed spelling of kros (“cross country”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, A geometrical figure consisting of two straight lines or bars intersecting each other such that at least one of them is bisected by the other.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Swedish, a ball hit more or less diagonally across the playing field
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- George Eliotb. 1819GBnot in their usual nameEnglish novelist, essayist, poet and journalist (1819–1880)
- Beverley Crossb. 1931GBBritish screenwriter (1931-1998)
- Ben Crossb. 1947GBBritish actor (1947-2020)
- Marcia Crossb. 1962USAmerican actress
- David Crossb. 1964USAmerican stand-up comedian and actor (born 1964)
- David MacMillanb. 1968GBnot in their usual nameBritish chemist (1968-)
- Roger Crossb. 1969JMJamaican–Canadian actor
- Joseph Crossb. 1986USAmerican actor (born 1986)
- Nikki Crossb. 1989GBBritish professional wrestler
- Tom Crossb. 2000USAmerican film editor
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 42 sources across 25 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 78K | #420 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 75K | #382 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 75K | #432 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Cross mean, and where does it come from?
- (i) Person who lived by a roadside or market cross or at a crossroads; (ii) a different form of Crosby (ii). Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Cross have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 356 thousand people named Cross in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled cross.
- How common is the name Cross?
- In the United States, the national register counted 77,557 people named Cross in 2010, about 1 in 4.3 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Cross?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/crossThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Cross”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.